The United Kingdom has selected Santoshan Indian crime drama directed by Sandhya Suri, will represent the country at the 2025 Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
Shahana Goswami plays Santosh, a driven young Hindu widow who inherits her husband's job as a police officer through a government scheme. She finds herself embroiled in institutional corruption as she warms to the prospect of working with veteran detective and tough-as-nails Inspector Sharma (Sunita Rajwar) on a brutal murder case involving a teenage girl from the lower-caste Dalit community.
Santosh premiered at Cannes this year in the Un Certain Regard section, where it was quickly acquired for North America by Metrograph Pictures. The Hollywood Reportercalled the film “gripping and engaging,” praising Suri's screenplay. “Instead of unwieldy expository dialogue, Suri relies on conversations between Santosh and Sharma to illuminate the forces (a discriminatory society, a corrupt workplace) that might push these two women into a kind of reluctant Faustian alliance.”
Santosh marks Suri's debut in narrative feature film after her breakthrough documentary Me for India (2005), and his short drama The fieldwhich won Best International Short Film at Toronto in 2018 and received a nomination at the 2019 BAFTA Awards.
The UK has had three films nominated for the Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category and won its first Oscar this year when Jonathan Glazer's Holocaust drama The area of interest received the highest honor.
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will unveil its 2025 Oscar nominees, including the nominees for best international feature film, on December 17. The Oscar nominations will be announced on January 17, 2025. The 97th Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, March 2.